
L%r .-ate- v ^ 




A o. l?/?4%JlK* *0 










0* **T!V«A, *M 






C 0^ 






•A 0 





A 







A 




0 




O V 












# . , ^ ° N ° " x 







ARTHUR C. PARKER 



Vol. II. 



No. 1. 



RESEARCHES AND TRANSACTIONS 



THE NEW YORK STATE ARCHEOLOGICAL 
ASSOCIATION 



LEWIS H. MORGAN CHAPTER 

ROCHESTER, N. Y. 



New York Indian Complex 
and How to Solve It 



ILLUSTRATED BY PHOTOGRAPHS 

PUBLISHED BY LEWIS H. MORGAN CHAPTER 
ROCHESTER, N. Y. 
1920 



Press of C. P. Milliken & Co., Canandaigua , N. Y. 



OF 




BY 



ARTHUR C : PARKER 
Secretary of the N. V. Stale Indian Commission 
and Archeologist of the State Museum 




THE NEW YORK INDIAN COMPLEX 
AND HOW TO SOLVE IT* 

By ARTHUR C. PARKER 
Secretary of the Indian Commission and Archeologist of the State Museum 

A certain English critic of American progress recently said, 
"America has long boasted that she is the melting pot of the 
world, but for the past fifty years the racial elements in America 
have refused to melt." However true or untrue this may be of 
the immigrant groups from Europe, it is to a large extent 
true of the Indians of New York state. 

Within our state there are more than 5,000 tribal Indians 
living on reservations. While to all outward appearances they 
are civilized, these tribal Indians yet retain a certain tribal 
independence and are self-governing. The Onondaga nation and 
the Seneca nation of Indians go so far as to assert that they 
still live on their ancestral land and that while the State of 
New York has grown up around them they are yet not in the 
State of New York. Each claims to be a nation and living 
under the protection of certain treaty rights that guarantee to 
them their sovereignty. Indeed some of the other tribes make 
this claim under the treaty of Canandaigua of 1794, proclaimed 
on January 21st, 1795, asserting that article 2 of this treaty 
promised : 

"The United States acknowledges the lands reserved to the Oneida, 
Onondaga and Cayuga nations in their respective treaties with the State 
of New York, and called their reservations to be their property; and 
the United States will never claim the same nor disturb them or either 
of the Six Nations, nor their Indian friends residing thereon and united 
with them, in the free use and enjoyment thereof; but the said 
reservations shall be theirs until they choose to sell the same to the 
people of the United States, who have the right to purchase." 

Some of the lands reserved have been sold, many acres 

have gone by a process of enforced "choice" The Oneidas 

* A paper prepared especially for Morgan Chapter, in response to 
the Chapter resolution on Indian ■citizenship. 



4 THE NEW YORK INDIAN COMPLEX 

and Cayugas are practically landless through such means. The 
Indian nations finding their property shrinking made a 
determined stand to resist further sale. The Senecas and 
Onondagas have been especially firm toward all measures by 
which more of their land might be taken. The Senecas learned 
a bitter lesson through the fraudulent "Treaty of Buffalo" by 
which they lost the Buffalo creek reservation in 1838, and 
fought so bitterly that an amended treaty was made in 1842 
by which they retained their lands on the Allegany and 
Cattaraugus. 

The contention of these Indians, who belong to the famous 
League of the Iroquois or Six Nations, is that they were nations 
long before the United States was established and were regarded 
as independent to such a degree that they made treaties with 
the foreign colonists from Europe, who later established the 
state of New York and the United States. "Why should we 
give up our government which in the days of the white invasion 
was a stable and powerful one?" say the Indians. "If the 
United States desires consolidation let them come to us seeking 
admission to our confederacy: we are the oldest government 
and we still exist and desire to exist." 

Here then is a problem of assimilation; shall the white man 
become an Iroquois or shall the Iroquois become as white men? 
It is an example of a racial group that has refused to melt. 

I. How effective is tribal government today? 

Each of the Indian tribes has some form of government, 
but not one retains the form of government it had at the close 
of the Revolutionary war. The old League of the Iroquois had 
a form of governmental administration that was nearly ideal 
for the state of society and the economic conditions with which 
it was designed to cope. But soon after the Revolutionary 
war the old government crumbled and was seized by councils 
of war chiefs. These Indian councils became extremely corrupt 
and incompetent. The Seneca nation, for example, had in 1838 
at least 70 chiefs as opposed to eight sachems under the 
original league schedule. There were still sachems who formed 
a sort of honorary body but they did not govern. 



THE NEW YORK INDIAN COMPLEX 



6 THE NEW YORK INDIAN COMPLEX 

In 1848 the Seneca nation had a revolution and formed a 
republic, this departure being a result of the corrupt govern- 
ment by chiefs through which the Senecas lost the Buffalo 
creek tract and nearly lost the rest of their possessions. As 
a result the Tonawanda band seceded from the Seneca nation 
and by paying for lands once their own they secured again a 
homeland and retained a tribal existence. 

Under the pressure of the white man's economic and social 
environment these Indians have undergone a great change. 
Externally they are " whitemanized". The economic factor 
governs the policy of their governments and the old time Indian 
ideals have mostly vanished. Several investigations and several 
official reports show that the tribal governments are inefficient 
and frequently corrupt. Indian officials are astute politicians, 
many times outwitting their white competitors. The Indian 
courts where a tribe has them are likewise incompetent and 
justice is said to be hard to obtain unless the seeker is on the 
side of the political party that sits as a court. 

None of the tribes has jails and arrests by the Indian 
marshal are conspicuous by their infrequency. The United 
States courts take cognizance of the major crimes and try them, 
but petty crimes on reservations, excepting the Oneidas and 
possibly the St. Regis, go unpunished, save by the feudal revenge 
of the aggrieved party. To some extent the State has extended 
laws over the reservations and has sought to enforce the 
"compulsory school attendance law", but a year ago the 
attorney general's office rendered an opinion that the State 
could not enforce its laws over the tribal Indians living under 
the protection of the treaty of 1795. The State departments 
were thrown into confusion for the departments of education, 
health and charities had expended large sums for the improve- 
ment and protection of the Indians, and now saw themselves 
unable to enforce their laws. The attorney general ruled that 
these Indians were the wards of the federal government and 
not of the State, and Deputy Attorney General Jenks in 
explaining the opinion went so far as to assert that he believed 
that all laws passed by the State legislature and seeking to 
govern certain internal affairs of the several tribes were invalid 



THE NEW YORK INDIAN COMPLEX 7 

and without force. The Indians soon learned of this opinion, 
it having grown out of an alleged violation of the conservation 
law, and those of them who stood for independent tribalism 
had another argument. 

Most of the reservations are small communities so far as 
population is concerned and this makes elfective government 
difficult. Most members of a tribe know each other personally 
and have their personal likes and aversions toward individuals. 
The tribal officers can scarcely make their orders impersonal. In 
enforcing tribal law they have no feeling that a higher officer 
and a stronger arm of the government is back of them; and 
in failing to perform their duties they likewise feel no prod of 
this arm. Tribal life is thereioie largely laissez faire. 

It is true that the reservations, especially those of the 
Senecas and the Onondagas, have picturesque features and that 
these have communities of non-Christian Indians who worship 
the Great Spirit in ancient form. But no community can live 
because of picturesque features alone, unless that feature is 
commercialized. A ruined castle does not make a comfortable 
dwelling. 

II. How do these Indians live? 

The Seneca nation is a corporation of Indians living on 
the Cattaraugus and Allegany reservations in Erie, Cattaraugus 
and Chautauqua counties. The Cattaraugus tract occupies the 
Cattaraugus valley from the mouth to Gowanda, and the 
Allegany tract occupies the Allegany valley from Carrolton to 
Onoville. The city of Salamanca lies in the heart of this 
reservation, and five other villages lie on leased tracts. The 
Seneca nation owns the Oil Spring reserve, a tract of 640 acres. 
Altogether the Seneca nation occupies 52,000 acres and has a 
population of 2,550 souls. Seneca land is valuable because of 
the oil and gas found beneath it, while the surface to a 
considerable extent embraces some of the best agricultural land 
in the state. In matters of the reform of the Seneca government 
the oil and gas rights, now leased by several corporations, 
constitute the veritable "Ethiopian in the fuel pile". Certain 
officials of the nation are charged with doing exactly what the 



8 THE NEW YORK INDIAN COMPLEX 

oil and gas operators desire, and of course a pecuniary reward 
is imputed. 

The Tonawanda band of Senecas live on a reservation 
purchased by them and situated in north-eastern Erie and 
north-western Uenesee counties, along Tonawanda creek. They 
have 7,549 acres and a population of 581. The land is chieny 
agricultural. 

The reservation of the Tuscaroras, who originally came 
from North Carolina, embraces 6,249 acres of Niagara county 
land, and there are 475 Tuscaroras. They have some good 
agricultural land and some excellent fruit orchards. They 
own a good stone quarry. 

The Onondaga reservation or "national domain" embraces 
6,100 acres and is "surrounded by Onondaga county". There 
are about 575 Onondagas. Their land is good in the valley but 
the hilly uplands are of little worth. They own a stone quarry 
which is leased to white operators. Many of the men who 
have little land work in the city of Syracuse which is only 
seven miles distant, or two miles or less from a trolley line. 

The St. Regis reservation lies in Franklin and St. Lawrence 
counties and embraces 14,640 acres and has a population of 
about 1,420 Indians. Across the line in Canada there are more 
than a thousand of these Indians holding some 12,000 acres. 
The St. Regis are mostly Mohawks, but have some Oneida and 
Onondaga admixture. There is a large amount of white blood 
in this tribe and most of its members are less than half Indian. 

The so-called Shinnecock Indians live in the town of 
Southhampton, Suffolk county, Long Island, where some 450 
acres are occupied. The original Shinnecock men were seamen 
and whalers. By 1876 nearly all the males had perished from 
shipwreck and other marine disasters. A settlement of negroes 
from the south then began to intermarry with the Shinnecock 
women until today the so-called tribe shows a pronounced 
African tinge. These people do a little gardening but are 
mostly fishermen and day laborers. 

None of the Indians in this state live by Indian pursuits. 
Their economic life is entirely that of the white man and they 
depend upon the white man's methods to supply their wants. 



THE NEW YORK INDIAN COMPLEX 9 

They raise little or no wool, and their farming, dairying, and 
to some extent poultry keeping, forms the bulk of their 
production. The St. Regis to some degree are makers of snow 
shoes, lacrosse sticks and baskets. Nearly all the tribes have 
a few basket makers and bead workers. Many of the Indian 
men and some Indian women work in factories, dairies, canneries, 
shops and stores. The Indian is not naturally a farmer to any 
greater degree than his white neighbor, but chooses his 
occupation according to his taste. A considerable number 
work for the railroads, some of them in offices. The Iroquois 
have produced some doctors, lawyers, engineers, clergymen and 
teachers as well as a few excellent business experts, but these 
are not numerous. 

Indian homes and farms are like those of rural whites, but 
many dwellings are yet of logs and some are mere shacks. To 
the contrary there are some fine houses furnished with many 
modern conveniences. Some Indian farmers also have many 
kinds of machinery and modern devices for dairying. The 
tendency of the Indian economically and socially is toward the 
white man's ideal of things. 

The old and conservative Indians who retain their ancient 
beliefs and who have resisted the advancements of education 
control about one fifth the population of the Senecas and 
Tonawandas. But even these are dependent on the products 
of civilization and aspire to the white man's goods. 




Tyipical log cabin home of the non-Christian Indians. 



10 



THE NEW YORK INDIAN COMPLEX 



It is thus seen that our State Indians have no economic 
separateness but are a part of our economic system. They are 
out of adjustment to it only because they seek to retain certain 
forms of tribalism, and tribal custom. Their greatest drawback 
is ignorance and the tyranny of tribal precedents. 

III. Do these Indians own in fee their land? 

In a decision rendered in the case of the Seneca nation 
versus Christie, (1891) 126 N. T., 122, 27 N. E., 275 the court 
said, "The fee to the lands on Indian reservations is in the State, 
subject to the Indians' right of occupation." This was a Seneca 
case, but in the recent case of George V. Pierce, (1914) 85 Misc. 
105, 148 N. Y. S., 230, the court also applied this decision to the 
Onondagas. Said the court, "The fee of the Onondaga 
reservation is in the State. Over it the State has the exclusive 
right of preemption. They constitute an alien nation, not a 
subject one." The fee of the Tonawanda and the St. Regis 
reservations is also in the State, but unlike other Indians the 
Tonawandas hold their land by purchase. 

One of the peculiar conditions governing the tenure of the 
lands of the Seneca nation is the so-called Ogden land claim. 
Before the colony of New York was definitely fixed, the colony 
of Massachusetts, in accordance with the customs of the times 
laid claim to the lands west of the Genesee river. When the 
war of the Revolution determined that a new country should 
be erected from the several states, Massachusetts gave New York 
the sovereignty over the western New York land so claimed but 
retained the preemptive right, subject to the extinguishment of 
the Indian title. Later Massachusetts sold this right to Robert 
Morris for $1,000,000 and Morris sold it, or lost it through 
mortgage, to the Ogden land company. The lands of the Seneca 
nation, except Oil Spring, and a part of the Tuscarora tract, are 
under this Ogden cloud. The Senecas and Tuscaroras fear that 
if they ever become citizens through the abandonment of their 
tribal government the Ogden claimants may assert owner- 
ship of their lands and expel them. The courts have never 
definitely said what the value or extent of the Ogden claim is, 
but the Ogden company through Charles Applebe. trustee, 
asked $200,000 for its right over the reservation lands. 



THE NEW YORK INDIAN COMPLEX 11 

The Onondagas claim that they alone own their land and 
that the white man has no title to it since the white man never 
owned it. "We cannot be disturbed in our possession of our 
ancestral domain," they vehemently assert. 

IV. How does tribal life react upon the Indians? 

Tribalism affects the Indians of this state in various ways, 
some of which have already been discussed. In the first instance 
it keeps them as a special people who are not subject to the 
responsibilities of citizens. It makes them a "peculiar people" 
who are exempt from the duty of caring for themselves entirely. 
Individuals do not feel their full social or civic responsibility. 
Indians cannot be sued by white citizens. Indians do not pay 
taxes. 

They feel that the white man has usurped so many of their 
rights that he should atone for his wrongs by giving to the 
Indian schools and churches, orphanages and the offices of 
the Charities department. They want the white man to build 
their roads and bridges. 

Now it may be right for the white man to fulfill his promises 
to the Indians, but that the Indians should receive these benefits 
is pauperizing to them. It places the Indian in the attitude 
of saying, "Give me schools, religion, charity, medical 
attendance, annuities, roads and gratuities, — I'll take these 
things because they are free, and treat them accordingly. ' ' This 
system denies to the Indian one of life's greatest rights — that 
of having an active, determining part in supplying himself 
with the requirements of civilization. The system is weakening 
and degenerating. It has made the "noble red man" a beggar. 
As the years go on it will break down his self reliance and 
replace it with shrinking fear. 

Even now many Indians fear the coming of citizenship 
and seek by every means to avoid it. They fear taxation for 
fear it may cause them to lose their lands. They fear the keen 
competition of white men vvho may come to live near them as 
neighbors. After all, it is only an instinctive dread of a native 
people for the relentless power of a dominant culture. 

The Indian, however, has as great capacity as his white 
neighbor. The laziness of mind that comes from the "take-it- 



12 THE NEW YORK INDIAN COMPLEX 

easy" reservation life inhibits expansion. "We are Indians," 
say the fearful, "and we want to live as we do. It is the 
' Indian way ' and is best for us ; we are happy. ' ' 

To some extent the Indian school system has been at fault, 
especially the education afforded by the government schools. 
These for the most part are but common grammar schools 
leading but little above the eighth grade. The Carlisle school, 
though in foot ball rated with the universities, was but an 
elementary school with a trade shop addition. An Indian 
youth, fooled into the belief that he had acquired an education 
in one of these institutions, soon found himself ill equipped to 
meet his better trained white competitor. The Indian to be 
rightly trained should have received a "white man's education" 
and not an Indian education just because he was an Indian, 
since his economic life was to be in a white man's world. 

Indians trained properly have risen to considerable heights 
in the business and professional world, but they have not usually 
been Indians who had only an "Indian education" or who lived 
on reservations. 

Tribalism, it is therefore found, diminishes the expansion 
of capacity. An Indian cannot ordinarily achieve his best 
in the tribal state. He cannot become as useful a factor to 
humanity in the tribal state as in the citizen state. He becomes 
ingrowing and static instead of expanding and dynamic. 

Tribalism in civilization, having special protection and 
gratuities, constitutes a socially weak spot in the common social 
fabric. It emphasizes exemption. As a result Indians are 
more ignorant than the surrounding whites ; they are not as 
healthy: they are not as thrifty: they are not as valuable as 
contributing factors to the world's progress; they are a menace 
to themselves. 

There are those who think that an Indian tribe should be 
conserved as a sort of menagerie or museum wherein the 
aborigines may be allowed to rove and slumber to extinction, 
but persons who thus think must realize that Indians must 
move upward in the scale of progress as must every race that 
is to survive. The white man of today has moved upward and 
away from his cruder life in the age of the Druids, and the white 



THE NEW YORK INDIAN COMPLEX 13 

man should give the Indian this right. This is a world in which 
economic conditions largely govern. Anything that places the 
Indian as an exception, as tribalism does, contributes to the 
destruction of the Indian. The Indian must struggle and think 
m a modern way if he is to survive as a virile member of the 
human race. His right is to have this experience of struggling 
to obtain greater heights. 

V. How did the white man acquire New York? 

The white European claimed sovereignty over New York 
state by right of discovery. The British claim to New York 
after the extinguishment of the Dutch claim was simply the 
sole right to colonize and to trade with the Indians. None 
of the English grants gave the grantee the right to take the soil 
by conquest but only through an extinguishment of the Indian 
title by purchase or treaty. When the Indians sold their 
lands they passed to the colonists and to the crown the right of 
governing those lands. By treaty the English bound the Indians 
to sell only to them. This prevented the establishment of little 
colonial provinces staked out like a checker board and under 
the rule of various sovereigns. The Indians fully understood 
that once they parted with their lands they could rule them no 
longer. Moreover these New York Indians fully understood 
what rights were gained and lost by conquest. The New York 
Iroquois came into New York and Canada from other regions 
and acquired the land by conquest or deliberate occupation. 
They destroyed the nationality of numerous tribes in historical 
times and claimed these lands and the right to sell them to 
the whites. 

Some of the Iroquois tribes were allies of the British in the 
Revolutionary war and went down in defeat with the British. 
In this way the Mohawks largely lost their lands and hunting 
grounds. Captain Brant, the Mohawk chief and principal 
leader, fully understood the consequences of the defeat of his 
nation as the ally of the British. As his people had gained their 
land by conquest so they lost it by conquest. The whole thing, 
though unhappy, was in full accord with the rules of warfare 
and possession as the Indians understood them. 



14 THE NEW YORK INDIAN COMPLEX 

Now, there are some friends of the Indian, more sentimental 
than practical, who believe that our Indians were deprived of 
meir lands entirely by fraud or confiscation. To a certain 
extent in some instances this may be true, but it is not entirely 
true. Where the Indians sold their lands for small sums it was 
oecause the boundless tracts of land in colonial times were worth 
little, at the time. There is a vast disparity in the price of land 
when unimproved and when a city rises upon it. It is the 
roadway, the buildings, the factories, the labor, the thought, 
the railways and the protection afforded by community life and 
its government that adds the hundred thousand per cent, to the 
value of land in its original condition. To say that the white 
man of today should make a readjustment of the original sale 
price or vacate the land for a reoccupation by the Indians is 
not logical. Shall the people of the British Isles repay the 
ancient Britons and their descendants for the lands that the 
xuigio-JS axons acquired by conquest? Shall the Normans now 
pay the Anglo-Saxons for the land they took and governed"/ 
Why then should we of today raise the question of an unjust 
occupation of this area when the Indian does not? 

VI. How did the Indian become a ward? 

For its own protection the United States bound the New 
York Indian nations, and others elsewhere, to treaties by which 
the Indian nations and tribes could deal solely with the United 
States and its people. If by chance some foreign nation was to 
be dealt with this should be done through the United States 
and with its consent. This was in order to protect the United 
States. 

The Indians of New York, and elsewhere, were dealt with by 
treaty so long as they were powerful in arms and in government 
and able to protect themselves. When they became comparative- 
ly small and unable to effectually protect their internal rights 
many complications arose due to the incursions and trespass of 
the white settlers and also due to greatly changed economic 
conditions. 

To protect the Indians from the gross invasion of their 
rights the United States assumed the role of guardian, gradually 
extending its offices as such. In the case of the United States 



THE NEW YORK INDIAN COMPLEX 



15 



v. Kagama, (1885) 118 U. S., 375, 6 S. Ct., 1109, 30 U. S. (L. ed), 
228, the Court ruled : 

"These Indians are the wards of the nation. They are communities 
uepenaent on the United States — dependent for their political rights. 
Tuey owe no allegiance to the States and from them receive no 
protection. Because of the local ill-feeling, the people of the States 
where they are found, are often their deadliest enemies. From their 
very weakness and helplessness, so largely due to the course of dealing 
of the federal government with them and tne treaties in which it has 
ueen promised, there also rises the duty of protection, and with it the 
power. This has always been recognized by the executive and by 
congress and by this court whenever the question has arisen. The 
power of the general government over these remnants of a race once 
powerful, now weak and diminished, in numbers, is necessary for their 
protection, as well as to the safety of those among whom they dwell, 
it must exist in that government, because it has never existed anywhere 
else, because the theatre of its existence is within the geographical 
limits of the United States, because it has never been denied, and because 
it alone can enforce its laws on all the tribes." 

The Six Nations of Iroquois entered into many treaties with 
the English and acknowledged that they had placed themselves 
under the protection of the Duke of York. This "protection" 
with the weakening of the political power of the Indians and the 
changes in government has ripened on the part of the dominant 
government, the United .States, into a status of guardian and 
ward. Indeed the Indians by frequent acknowledgment nave 
regarded themselves as wards and sought the government as 
their guardian. 

VII. What will be the ultimate fate of these tribes? 

1. They will become extinct through the dissipation of their 
members by distribution in the citizen communities or 'by death, 

2. They will become 'absorbed in the white race by intermarriage, 

or 

3. Eventually become citizens of the commonwealth. 

1. There seems no immediate likelihood of the tribes 
becoming extinct. The population of the tribes has increased 
twenty per cent, in the last hundred years, or from 4,538 in 
1820, (N. Y. census) to 6,046 in 1910 (U. S. census). Certain 
tribal members enter the business life of the country, but most 
of these retain a residence on their respective reservations. This 
is not dissipation. 

2. There is more or less intermarriage between the whites 
and the New York Indians, so much so that it is to be doubted 



16 THE NEW YORK INDIAN COMPLEX 

that the Indian blood averages as much as 75 per cent. now. 
This dilution will continue until, if the tribes retain their status, 
the preponderance of blood will be Anglo-Saxon. 

3. The policy of the United States government is to prepare 
the Indians for citizenship and to confer citizenship as a right 
when individual Indians are found to be competent in our 
commercial life. Citizenship is an inescapable goal. The Indians 
of this State some day will be citizens, for it is anomalous that 
there should be nations within the nation and portions of the 
population segregated and living under special laws. 

VIII. If, then, citizenship is the ultimate fate of the Indians of 
New York, what barriers interpose to prevent the 
bestowal of citizenship? 

1. Many of the Indians living on the reservations in this 
State desire to avoid the responsibilities of citizenship as long 
as possible, finding it easier to live in tribalism than in citizen- 
ship. They fear the loss of lands through the accruement of 
taxes that they cannot pay and to the quick inrush of whites 
who will eagerly buy their lands. In a tribal state they have 
a refuge with their fellow tribesmen. The poor and the landless 
thus have an asylum. Reservations are refuges for the 
incompetent and thriftless who may live on the energy of the 
thrifty and landholding tribesmen. 

2. Certain treaties, notably that of 1795, pledge to the 
New York State Indians freedom from interference and 
molestation. The treaties do not affect the St. Regis tribe. 

3. The Ogden land claim seems to be a lien or preemptive 
claim upon the lands of the Seneca nation and a portion of the 
Tuscaroras. If the tribes are dissolved and citizenship granted 
the Ogden claimants will assume ownership of the Indian lands, 
but this claim may be only the right of first bid. The claim has 
never been definitely determined though it has been before the 
courts several times. 

4. Certain contracts and treaties between these Indians 
and the State and federal governments promise certain annuities 
and other gratuities. These must be reckoned with and satisfied. 

5. If citizenship is extended without protecting former 
rights the Indians may lose the right to certain claims that they 



THE NEW YORK INDIAN COMPLEX 17 

now assert against the State and Nation. This might amount 
to confiscation without recompense, since the claims are in the 
names of the several tribes and not in bodies of citizenized 
Indians. 

IX. How may these barriers be removed? 

1. By educating these Indians in the meaning of citizen- 
ship and proving that they must make ready for it as an 
inescapable event that is not far off. Tribalism blinds the 
Indians to their real destiny and part in the common struggle 
of universal humanity. They must understand that every 
individual and aggregate of individuals must conform to the 
laws of moral, economic and social progress. There must be an 
intensive child and adult educational drive. 

2. By trying out in the Supreme court the validity of the 
Ogden land claim and by paying this claim if found to be just. 
If found merely to be the first right of bid and not a title in fee 
or a sole right to buy, then the claim will be without prejudice. 

3. By showing that greatly changed conditions among the 
whites and especially among the Indians have made old treaties 
and tribalism anomalous in the present state of progress. The 
Indians of today are not in the same condition that their 
ancestors were. The descendants of the people treated with by 
the government have outgrown the special forms of legal 
protection, so much so that these things have become restraints 
to their progress and barriers to their higher rights. 

4. By capitalizing all treaty and trust funds and by paying 
out these moneys pro-rata to each person entitled to receive the 
same. 

5. By making a complete and final roll of every member of 
a tribe and every other person who by descent is entitled to 
receive a share of his tribal ancestors' property and money. 
The roll should be held open for a period during which time 
claimants who had been excluded might make application for 
enrollment and during which time those enrolled but not entitled 
to enrollment might be excluded. 

6. By capitalizing all tribal property, except land for 
dwellings and agriculture, and selling this property, giving the 
Indians the first and preferential bid, then distributing the 



18 THE NEW YORJK INDIAN COMPIJEX 

amount realized per capita to enrolled members of the respective 
tribes. 

7. By causing 1 tbe various railroads and industries located 
on Indian reservations to pay an assessed amount for the value 
of the lands occupied by them or to vacate these lands. 

8. By causing the various villages and the City of 
Salamanca located on Indian lands to pay into the Indian 
tribal treasury or into the trust fund created, sums equivalent 
to the present value of the property held by them, said values 
to be determined by a commission. 

9. By reserving the right of the enrolled members of tribes 
jointly to' start action at any time within ten years after the 
bestowal of citizenship, and at any time before this end, to 
recover on any claim against individual citizen, corporation, or 
the State or federal governments and the people thereof. The 
bestowal of citizenship must not prejudice or invalidate any 
tribal claim to things of value in which the tribe has an interest 
or title. 

10. By establishing a competency commission whereby the 
money and property of minor and incompetent Indians might 
be safeguarded. 

11. By giving each competent Indian the deed of the land 
he now holds and can show a title to, or other right of 
occupancy, subject of course to the opinion of the courts of the 
State. 

12. By abolishing all tribal courts and forms of tribal 
government. 

13. By extending over the , Indians in their several 
communities and elsewhere all the laws of the State and the 
Nation. 

14. By extending citizenship and the right of franchise to 
all competent Indians. 

X. What precedents have we for such action? 

The United States government has steadily pursued a policy 
of educating Indians for citizenship. Under the Dawes general 
allotment act of 1887 all Indians except those of New York 
were given individual holdings of their tribal land and a trust 
patent, which after the expiration of twenty-five years would 



L0.4 



THE NEW YORK INDIAN COMPIiEX 19 

give the Indian or his heirs full title with the right to sell. 

Allotted Indians were regarded as citizens and enumerated as 
''Indians taxed". 

Legislation grew up to further protect the allotted Indian 
which in the end amounted to complex restrictions. The Burke 
act of 1906 deferred citizenship after the expiration of the trust 
period. Later, about 1914, the department of the interior 
organized competency commissions to determine what individual 
Indians were competent to receive without restriction their full 
property. Congress now has a bill pending before it, (passed 
the House Jan. 14, 1920) which makes all Indians citizens but 
protects their holdings due them from their former tribal 
condition. The only Indians excepted are the five civilized 
tribes of Oklahoma who have been specially provided for 
already, the Osage nation with its rich oil fields and the Seneca 
nation of New York. This last exception was made because of 
the cloud of the Ogden land claim to the Seneca domain. 

All societies and associations of Indians and white citizens 
interested in Indian welfare have advised education toward 
citizenship. Among these are the Indian Rights Association, 
the National Indian Association, the Boston Indian Citizenship 
League, the Board of Indian Commissioners, the Lake Mohonk 
Conference, the Federated Indian Conference of Philadelphia, 
and several others. 

XI. What would be the results of citizenship? 

Reservations are places of social and moral stagnation. 
When the barriers are cut and the normal stream of civic 
responsibility and vigorous citizenship flows into and through 
them stagnation will cease. Instead of lethargy there will be 
an awakening that will stimulate moral energy. The release of 
moral energy is one of the objects of civilization and citizenship. 

The onward march of progress cannot be stopped and no 
social group can hope to survive as a healthy one that does not 
keep pace and step. 

Without doubt citizenship bestowed upon the New York 
Indians would be a bitter experience to some. Those who have 
refused to prepare for it and those who because of the 
degenerating influence of tribalism have become diseased 



20 THE NEW YORK INDIAN COMPLEX 

morally and physically will go the way of all created things 
that have been arrested in development, reverted or perverted. 
The law of nature is that the unfit shall be weeded out to make 
room for the energetic and competent. Citizenship for the New 
York Indians will prevent the propagation of the unfit and put 
a premium on the thrift of those who aspire. Citizenship will 
give us a better grade of Indians more nearly like the Indians 
of old in point of stamina and independence of character. It 
will make the descendant of the first American of old the right 
kind of American today. 




An oat field on a N. Y. Indian reservation. 





^ rt> 





°o 0° ^ V.,,. 









2; r^Bte*: 



* o „ o 




f * o 













D0BBS BROS. 

LIBRARY BINDING 



